Emily with her violin. We don't have a clear practice program yet. Needless to say we need to work on it.
Tuesday, February 21, 2006
So you have a Ph.D now what?
I am approaching the end of my Ph. D. and am looking for jobs. The good news is there are jobs. The bad news is I am not sure which I want. The sad thing is that I have been in school for almost 10 years and I am not sure what I want to be when I grow up.
There are really four kinds of positions available to someone with a Ph.D.:
1. Work for the government. For me that means USDA, usually in a plant geneticist or plant breeding position. Once and a while there is a germplasm curator position. More and more of these positions are molecular biologist positions. I think the reasoning is that molecular markers allow dissection of traits, etc. etc. but the long and short of it is that they publish more.
I don't think that I want to be a molecular geneticist, otherwise I think USDA positions are great because of steady research funds, job security, and good pay. I want to be actively involved in research, and I am not sure that I can sustainably work with markers. Currently, there is a Sudden Oak Death position in California and probably some postdoc positions.
2. Be a Professor. Teaching 1-3 classes a semester, advising graduate students, being on committees, writing grant proposals, publishing papers, trying to get tenure. Will the fun never end?
Life after tenure seems pretty good and pay ranges from 60,000 - 90,000 . Working with students is rewarding and there is a lot of lattitude for research and time. I have applied for three or four positions, including one here at A&M in cotton breeding. Too many professors seem to find better things to do than work at the bench or in the field.
3. Private industry. Make good money, see the world, sell your soul. Trade secrets and the bottom line make publishing in journals and presenting at conferences a very low priority. The good thing is that they also focus research into economically viable, and I guess that could mean important areas.
Seed companies are the main source of employment options for me such as in cotton: Bayer, DeltaPine, Phytogen, Monsanto, and a number of small companies. Outside cotton, the big players are Dupont which owns Pioneer, Seminis, DeRuiter, and many more depending on crop.
I have a job offer from Ag alumni seed, a small seed company in Indiana. They are looking for a popcorn breeder. There is also a possibility of a job with Bayer Crop Sciences as an experimental breeder. It is an interesting position because they seem to want someone that can pull together molecular as well as field data and start to integrate information that is coming out of genomics and mapping. They want to start interviewing candidates next couple of weeks and I would find out in the next month. I think that I would have a decent chance at it, but the popcorn company would like an answer before I would hear from Bayer.
The beauty of a private company is that there are no grants to apply for, no tenure to earn, no classes to teach and no graduate students to advise. The negative is that profitability drives promotion and retention. I have not worked in that environment and it is intimidating to jump in.
What to do? What would you choose? Is McDonalds hiring?
There are really four kinds of positions available to someone with a Ph.D.:
1. Work for the government. For me that means USDA, usually in a plant geneticist or plant breeding position. Once and a while there is a germplasm curator position. More and more of these positions are molecular biologist positions. I think the reasoning is that molecular markers allow dissection of traits, etc. etc. but the long and short of it is that they publish more.
I don't think that I want to be a molecular geneticist, otherwise I think USDA positions are great because of steady research funds, job security, and good pay. I want to be actively involved in research, and I am not sure that I can sustainably work with markers. Currently, there is a Sudden Oak Death position in California and probably some postdoc positions.
2. Be a Professor. Teaching 1-3 classes a semester, advising graduate students, being on committees, writing grant proposals, publishing papers, trying to get tenure. Will the fun never end?
Life after tenure seems pretty good and pay ranges from 60,000 - 90,000 . Working with students is rewarding and there is a lot of lattitude for research and time. I have applied for three or four positions, including one here at A&M in cotton breeding. Too many professors seem to find better things to do than work at the bench or in the field.
3. Private industry. Make good money, see the world, sell your soul. Trade secrets and the bottom line make publishing in journals and presenting at conferences a very low priority. The good thing is that they also focus research into economically viable, and I guess that could mean important areas.
Seed companies are the main source of employment options for me such as in cotton: Bayer, DeltaPine, Phytogen, Monsanto, and a number of small companies. Outside cotton, the big players are Dupont which owns Pioneer, Seminis, DeRuiter, and many more depending on crop.
I have a job offer from Ag alumni seed, a small seed company in Indiana. They are looking for a popcorn breeder. There is also a possibility of a job with Bayer Crop Sciences as an experimental breeder. It is an interesting position because they seem to want someone that can pull together molecular as well as field data and start to integrate information that is coming out of genomics and mapping. They want to start interviewing candidates next couple of weeks and I would find out in the next month. I think that I would have a decent chance at it, but the popcorn company would like an answer before I would hear from Bayer.
The beauty of a private company is that there are no grants to apply for, no tenure to earn, no classes to teach and no graduate students to advise. The negative is that profitability drives promotion and retention. I have not worked in that environment and it is intimidating to jump in.
What to do? What would you choose? Is McDonalds hiring?
Monday, February 13, 2006
Timeline to graduation
There is so much to do between now and graduation. I feel like I have procrastinated so much. I am running markers right now in Dr. Menz's lab along with Stella and Nilesh. Things are working I just am frustrated with the politics of it all. That is all I dare say here, but if you want all the juicy details email me and I will give them all to you. I just wish we could all get along.
I got a JOB OFFER from Ag Alumni Seed!!!! They are a small popcorn breeding company owned by the alumni association of Purdue. They licence all of the wheat, soybean, and corn lines released by the Purdue breeders as well as their own popcorn lines. Their biggest competitors are ConAgra, a behemoth of a company, and Weaver, a local company. They are in Indiana, just outside of Lafayette, about an hour from Indianapolis. They are offering not bad pay with pretty good benefits. The town is nice, the company is small with good people working there. I feel like I could learn a lot from Max Robbins, the breeder. I think I could feel at home there. The negatives are that it is far from a temple about two and a half hours to Chicago, IL. It also doesn't involve teaching or will pay as much as some jobs, ie Bayer.
Well, back to work.
I got a JOB OFFER from Ag Alumni Seed!!!! They are a small popcorn breeding company owned by the alumni association of Purdue. They licence all of the wheat, soybean, and corn lines released by the Purdue breeders as well as their own popcorn lines. Their biggest competitors are ConAgra, a behemoth of a company, and Weaver, a local company. They are in Indiana, just outside of Lafayette, about an hour from Indianapolis. They are offering not bad pay with pretty good benefits. The town is nice, the company is small with good people working there. I feel like I could learn a lot from Max Robbins, the breeder. I think I could feel at home there. The negatives are that it is far from a temple about two and a half hours to Chicago, IL. It also doesn't involve teaching or will pay as much as some jobs, ie Bayer.
Well, back to work.
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